© Guy Bolongaro
Artefact Sound: أحمد [ahmed] / 1984
STUK, Sound In Motion, Echoes of Dissent & In vitro present:
The best of the European improvisation scene has delivered the “best album of 2024” (The Wire Magazine), inspired by jazz composer Ahmed Abdul-Malik.
PRACTICAL
➤ Saturday 14.02 - 20:00
➤ STUK Soetezaal
➤ Tickets: €18 / €14 / €9
➤ Seated concert with open doors, no drinks allowed.
PROGRAMME
19:45: doors
20:00: 1984 (Kobe Van Cauwenberghe, Mariam Rezaei & Sakina Abdou)
21:30: أحمد [ahmed]
22:30: end
+ 16:30 → 18:00: Echoes of Dissent (Vol. 8): Conversation with أحمد [Ahmed] (STEK Workspace)
1984 © Ella Struyf
• 1984 (Kobe Van Cauwenberghe, Mariam Rezaei & Sakina Abdou)
1984 brings together three restless experimentalists, all born in that hauntingly symbolic year: saxophonist Sakina Abdou, turntablist Mariam Rezaei, and guitarist/composer Kobe Van Cauwenberghe. Following a residency at STUK (March 2025), a concert at the Summer Bummer Festival (August 2025), and a three-day recording session at the Dropa House studio (September 2025), the trio now presents its debut LP, ‘The Forward Process’, via the Dropa Disc label.
Inspired by a passage from Ursula K. Le Guin’s ‘The Dispossessed’ and by Zooid, the unique harmonic intervallic system of Henry Threadgill, 1984 translates dystopian echoes into vibrant, utopian noise. The trio composes and plays complex, collective, and dreamy music in which every element moves independently yet remains interconnected.
© Guy Bolongaro
• أحمد [ahmed]
أحمد [ahmed] brings heavy rhythmic music based on repetitive patterns and swinging rhythmic shifts in accent. A powerful punch in the stomach that subsequently transitions into a deep feeling of ecstasy. The foundation for the quartet is the music of Ahmed Abdul-Malik, a now deceased New York bassist and composer who introduced Arabic and East African influences into jazz music. His thoughts and melodies shine through in the music of أحمد [ahmed], which is formed by some of the best European improvisational musicians: Pat Thomas, Antonin Gerbal, Joel Grip, and Seymour Wright. Their albums, released from 2017 to the present, are unparalleled journeys that excel in technique and endurance. But أحمد [ahmed] is a band that you really have to see live, and now you can do so for the first time in Belgium during Artefact Sound.
Pat Thomas: piano
Seymour Wright: alto saxophone
Joel Grip: double bass
Antonin Gerbal: drums
• Echoes of Dissent (Vol. 8): Conversation with أحمد [Ahmed]
Preceding the concert of أحمد [Ahmed] and on the occasion of the publication of a book compiling writings by and about أحمد [Ahmed], STUK is hosting an extensive conversation with the band members. We will discuss improvisation as investigation and making music as a medium of thought; the music and ideas of Ahmed Abdul-Malik and the Arabic and Muslim roots of Jazz and improvised music; the importance of probing in and into ‘jazz’ and the possibilities of new jazz nutation; أحمد [Ahmed] as an accommodating and radical vision of synthesis and open structure(s) and a shared space of (re-)imagination and (re-)interpretation.
In the context of the research project Echoes of Dissent (KASK & Conservatory / School of Arts Gent), in collaboration with In vitro.
The أحمد [Ahmed] publication is published by In vitro and KASK School of Arts
Edited by أحمد [ahmed]. Series editors: Stoffel Debuysere, Jef Lambrechts, Will Holder.
Location
Price
€18 (standard)
€14 (STUK card)
€9 (- 19 / KU Leuven Culture Card)
